I heard one story about service in 1995 from one sadhu, an acharya
sannyasi, who came to our temple as a guest at the inauguration of the
centenary building in honour of Srila Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj's 100th
appearance day. I can remember that story now. Gurudev asked him to speak
some Hari-katha at the assembly and I can remember what that sannyasi
said until now.

Once, two brahmacharis stayed at some temple. They would fight each
other every day—one of them would say, "I do so much service and you are not
doing anything!" and the other one would say, "I do everything, it is
you who is not doing anything! You only do puja, and I arrange
everything—I do the shopping, I do the cooking, etc. I do everything!" and so
on. One day, they fought like this in front of their Guru. Their Gurudev was
old and blind, he could not see anything, so when the two brahmacharis
fought in front of him saying, "O Gurudev, I do everything, I cook and do
this and this and this, and on top of that I come to massage your body with
oil, I help you to bath!" and the other one said, "It is not true! I also
come to help Gurudev to bathe! And I also give him prasadam. I
do everything!" Hearing this, Gurudev told them, "You are always fighting
because of my service. I am going to divide your service." Then he said to
one of the brahmacharis, "From today, you will massage my left leg,
and you," he said to the other brahmachari, "will massage my right
leg."

And they did that every day—one of the disciples massaged his Guru's left
leg, and the another one right leg. A few days later, one of the
brahmacharis who was supposed to massage his Guru's right leg got a
little sick and could not come to massage his Guru's leg, so the other
brahmachari came and massaged only the left leg of his Guru. Gurudev
asked him, "You are massaging only my left leg, why are you not massaging my
right leg?" The disciple replied, "Gurudev, you divided the service a month
ago and said that it was his leg. It is not my leg, that is why I am not
massaging it." Gurudev said then, "Oh, that is his leg?! Is it not my
leg?! Then I will break my leg!" Gurudev was very sad and felt pain to see
this—what kind of service is this?

That is the kind of service we do. It is actually not service. What is
spiritual life service? The main thing is that you must make your Gurudev
happy. That is what service is. If we see how our Guru-varga, our Param
Gurudev Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj, Srila
Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur, preach Krishna consciousness, what
they do to make their Gurudev happy, how they serve their Gurudev,
then we can understand what service is. How much service Srila Rupa Goswami,
Srila Sanatan Goswami, Srila Raghunath Das Goswami, Srila Jiva Goswami, Srila
Narottam Das Thakur did for their Guru. If we look at their examples, we can
understand it. That is the main thing, but we cannot understand it.

How will we understand these things? If you keep an iron outside, it becomes
full of rust and a magnet cannot attract it. Magnet always attracts iron, but
if that a piece of iron is full of rust, magnet will not attract it. We have
been covered by the illusory environment for so many years, so many
lifetimes—how will Krishna take us from this illusory environment to Krishna
consciousness, to our proper place in Goloka Vrindavan? How we will get
service of Radha Krishna in Goloka Vrindavan? How is it possible? If we do
not get proper association of a proper sadhu, it is impossible. You must
understand that. That is why we need to make our Guru happy. That is called
service. If you do whatever service Gurudev has given you properly, you will
be able to understand easily what is service of the Guru and Vaishnavs. That
is the main thing.

His Divine Grace Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj is reading from Sri
Chaitanya-charitamrita, chapter 22: 'Devotion to Krishna is the primary
goal of life. Karma, yoga, jnana look up to bhakti; these
practices have very little power—without devotion to Krishna, they
cannot give the result.'

'He expounds the glory of Sri Rupa, Sri Sanatan, and Sri Raghunath. In this world he is glorified as being nondifferent from Sri Jiva and a counterpart of Srila Krsnadas Kaviraj and Srila Narottam Thakur. Eternally I offer my obeisance to my master's feet.'